Hurricane Laura was close to reaching Category 5 strength Wednesday night and was on the verge of becoming the most powerful hurricane ever to strike Louisiana, threatening the region with deadly storm surges, flash floods and devastating winds.
With winds of 150 mph, Laura was just 7 mph short of the most powerful storm category possible and matching the previous record-breaker Lost Island Hurricane of 1856.
Some additional strengthening was possible Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm was blowing in with more power than Hurricane Harvey had when it made landfall in Texas in 2017.
"There's been a lot of question about whether this storm would make it to Category 5 strength before landfall -- I think that is becoming increasingly likely," said meteorologist Donald Jones of the National Weather Service's regional office that covers parts of the Louisiana and Texas coastlines that are in the bull's-eye of Laura's path.
"I think all evidence right now indicates that we're probably going to be looking at a Category 5 storm," he said.
Authorities implored coastal residents of Texas and Louisiana to evacuate and worried that not enough people had fled by the time winds began picking up.
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The storm grew nearly 87% in power in just 24 hours to a size the National Hurricane Center called "extremely dangerous." Drawing energy from the warm Gulf of Mexico waters, the system was on track to arrive late Wednesday or early today as the most powerful hurricane to strike the U.S. so far this year.
"It looks like it's in full beast mode, which is not what you want to see if you're in its way," University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said.
Forecasters said up to 15 inches of rain could fall in some places.
One major Louisiana highway already had standing water as Laura's outer bands moved ashore with tropical storm-force winds. Thousands of sandbags lined roadways in tiny Lafitte, La., and winds picked up as shoppers rushed into a grocery store in low-lying Delcambre, La.
Trent Savoie, 31, said he was staying put. "With four kids and 100 farm animals, it's just hard to move out," he said.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards fretted that the dire predictions were not resonating despite authorities putting more than 500,000 coastal residents under mandatory evacuation orders.
Edwards activated the state's entire National Guard. In Lake Charles, La., Guard members drove school buses around neighborhoods, offering to pick up families. Across the state line in Port Arthur, Texas, few stragglers boarded evacuation buses, and city officials announced that two C-130 transport planes offered the last chance to leave.
Abbott warned that people who fail to get out of harm's way could be cut off from help long after the storm hits.
A Category 4 or 5 hurricane can render wide areas uninhabitable for weeks or months and knock out power for just as long.
PROBLEMS COMPOUNDED
The threat of such devastation posed a new disaster-relief challenge for a government already straining under the coronavirus pandemic. The parts of Louisiana that were under evacuation orders included areas turning up high rates of positive tests.
The National Hurricane Center kept raising its estimate of Laura's storm surge, from 10 feet just days ago to twice that size -- a height that forecasters said would be especially deadly.
"Heed the advice of your local authorities. If they tell you to go, go! Your life depends on it today," said Joel Cline, tropical program coordinator at the National Weather Service. "It's a serious day and you need to listen to them."
On Twitter, President Donald Trump urged coastal residents to heed officials. Hurricane warnings were issued from San Luis Pass, Texas, to Intracoastal City, La., and reached inland for 200 miles. Storm surge warnings extended from Freeport, Texas, to the mouth of the Mississippi River.
For some, the decision to leave home left them with no place to stay. Wary of opening mass shelters during a pandemic, Texas officials instead put evacuees in hotels, but Austin stopped taking arrivals before dawn because officials said they ran out of rooms.
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Other evacuees called the state's 211 information line and were directed to Ennis, Texas, outside Dallas, only to be told after driving hundreds of miles that no hotels or vouchers were available.
Taniquia Ned and her sisters showed up without money to rent a room, saying the family had burned through its savings after losing jobs because of the pandemic. "The covid-19 is just totally wiping us out," said Shalonda Joseph, 43, a teacher in Port Arthur.
Edwards lamented that the impending storm meant suspension of community testing for covid-19 at a crucial time -- as elementary and secondary schools in Louisiana open and students return to college campuses. "We're basically going to be blind for this week," Edwards said, referring to the lack of testing.
HEAVY FLOODING FEARED
Forecasters said storm surge topped by waves could submerge entire towns. Water was already rising in the small Louisiana community of Holly Beach in the imperiled Cameron Parish, which forecasters have warned could become part of the Gulf after the storm comes ashore.
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Laura is expected to cause widespread flash flooding in states far from the coast. Flood watches were issued for much of Arkansas, and forecasters said heavy rainfall could arrive by Friday in parts of Missouri, Tennessee and Kentucky. Laura is so powerful that it's expected to become a tropical storm again once it reaches the Atlantic Ocean, potentially threatening the Northeast.
Becky Clements, 56, evacuated from Lake Charles, La., after hearing that it could take a direct hit. She and her family found an AirBnb hundreds of miles inland. Almost 15 years have passed since Hurricane Rita destroyed the city.
"The devastation afterward in our town and that whole corner of the state was just awful," Clements recalled. "Whole communities were washed away, never to exist again. ... So knowing how devastating the storms are, there was no way we were going to stay for this."
The church educator said she fears for her office, which is in a trailer after recent construction.
"I very much anticipate that my office will be gone when I get back."
The hurricane also threatens a center of the U.S. energy industry. The government said 84% of Gulf oil production and an estimated 61% of natural gas production were shut down. Nearly 300 platforms have been evacuated. Consumers are unlikely to see big price hikes, however, because the pandemic has decimated demand for fuel.
"If Laura moves further west toward Houston, there will be a much bigger gasoline supply problem," oil analyst Andrew Lipow said, as refineries usually take two to three weeks to resume full operations.
Laura closed in on the U.S. after killing nearly two dozen people on the island of Hispaniola, including 20 in Haiti and three in the Dominican Republic, where it knocked out power and caused intense flooding.
EVACUATION ADVISED
For anyone living in an area that floods or is in the direct path of Laura's landfall, "there is no calculation to be made: Get out," said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. "Whatever fears you might have about covid are secondary -- even those with health issues that might make riding out a weaker storm an option."
The power grid operator for the U.S. Midwest is already bracing itself for the storm. The system manager Midcontinent Independent System Operator has issued a severe weather alert through Thursday and said it has back-up operations ready.
Meanwhile, New Orleans-based utility giant Entergy Corp. has already requested mutual assistance, and said it has tens of thousands of workers from 20 states preparing to assist in restoring power following the storm.
Laura could cause as much as $25 billion in damage and economic losses, Watson said. The destruction to refineries could cost $5 billion alone.
Hundreds of residents of 11 southwest Louisiana nursing homes were evacuated, according to state health officials. Most were in Calcasieu Parish, which is expected to take a direct strike from the hurricane. State Health Department spokeswoman Aly Neel said buses and ambulances moved the residents mainly to other facilities in Louisiana, but also in Texas.
In the south Louisiana community of Delcambre, a steady stream of customers stopped for last-minute supplies at Shawn's Cajun Meats and Grocery.
"Getting some snacks. Definitely getting some beer. I'm pretty sure that's the highest-selling product around here," said Austin Domingues, 26.
Domingues said he and his family had been prepping for three days. At his father's nearby sugar cane farm, "we've been moving equipment on the highest ground we have."
While Domingues said his wife probably would evacuate to Lafayette, La., farther north and east of Delcambre, he and other members of his family planned to stay put. He said he expected to stay at his father's farm, where the house is 14 feet off the ground.
"I don't know if it's too smart, but we're going to stay just in case we need to help people out," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Melinda Deslatte, Jeff Martin, Stacey Plaisance, John L. Mone, Gerald Herbert, Paul J. Weber, Seth Borenstein, Juan A. Lozano, Jake Bleiberg, Jay Reeves, Jill Bleed, Julie Walker, Desiree Mathurin and Sophia Tulp of The Associated Press; and by Bloomberg News.
